by Laura Scott
Except Paul’s claim that he hadn’t committed the first two crimes.
Goose bumps rose along her arms. What if Sherman was right? What if in their haste to convict him, they hadn’t done a thorough job of investigating the truth?
He’d gone to the same university as Katie. He worked in the chemistry lab, she’d worked in the library. Obviously they easily could have met at either place. Witnesses had seen him talking to Katie inside the pub. He’d spiked her drink with Rohypnol.
Was it possible the chemistry lab used latex gloves?
What if he’d killed Katie because of some personal issue between them? What if he really hadn’t murdered the first two victims, but used the same M.O. to kill Katie? What if he was actually the original copycat murderer?
And the same man who’d killed the first two victims was still on the loose, killing again—while taunting her to find him?
Megan glanced at her watch. It was already close to five o’clock. The Madison crime lab would be pretty much closed down for the night, but she had a key.
They’d given her a key the last time they’d asked her to do a weekend shift. She’d forgotten to turn it back in.
Besides, the lab wasn’t ever closed down completely. There was a skeleton crew on the off shifts.
Did she dare drive up to the lab to see what sorts of particles might be embedded in the braided threads of the rope used on Amy?
If she could prove that these two most recent murders were likely linked to victims they’d found well over two years ago, she could get Sam off the suspect list. Not to mention they’d have four murders indicating the work of a serial killer, warranting a call to the FBI.
And having the FBI called in would take pressure off Luke.
She didn’t want to delay, because every instinct she had was screaming at her that this was the only theory that made sense.
Taking a deep breath to calm her jangled nerves, she walked slowly out to the main area of the sheriff’s department to find Luke.
He was standing off to the side, talking to Sam. She wasn’t trying to eavesdrop but could tell they were discussing the interview that had already taken place.
She hung back for a few minutes, waiting for them to finish.
Luke saw her standing there and broke off his conversation with his son. “Is there something you need?” he asked politely, without any of the warmth she’d come to appreciate.
“I have a theory about our murder suspect, when you have a minute,” she said.
“I’m pretty busy. Can it wait?” Luke asked.
She narrowed her gaze. Hadn’t he been the one who decided they couldn’t be distracted from the investigation? “Not really,” she began, only to be interrupted by Frank.
“Sheriff, Mayor wants to talk to you,” Frank yelled from halfway across the room.
Luke’s brows came together in a deep frown. “Tell him I’ll call him back.”
Frank was already shaking his head. “No, sir, this wasn’t a request, but an order. He wants to see you in his office down at city hall, ASAP.”
Megan saw the resigned expression in Luke’s eyes as he glanced at his son, and she realized that the mayor had probably already heard about Sam’s potential involvement. Obviously it wouldn’t look good for the interim sheriff to have a son suspected of murder.
“Go ahead, Dad, I’ll wait here for you,” Sam said.
“All right. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Luke said with a sigh. “I have a feeling this meeting won’t take long.”
Megan couldn’t believe it when Luke brushed past her yet again without so much as a glance in her direction. She could feel Sam’s intense gaze, gauging her reaction.
She tried to ignore them both. Okay, so Luke wasn’t interested in her theory. So what? She didn’t need his approval, and besides, there was no point in sitting around doing nothing.
The sooner she got her evidence, the better.
Megan hurried back down the hall to her office so she could get her purse and her car keys. Thankfully, she’d gotten a call earlier that her car was repaired. She’d noticed it sitting in the parking lot when they’d arrived.
For a moment, she hesitated, remembering how she’d been followed, but then she steeled her resolve.
No one knew her plans. The chances of anyone realizing she was heading to Madison at this late hour were slim to none.
Feeling more self-confident, she slung her purse over her shoulder and headed back out to the main dispatch area. Sam was still standing there, his shoulder propped against the wall. Aside from Sam, who glanced at her curiously, no one else seemed to pay attention to her as she slipped outside.
The parking lot wasn’t too crowded, but her car was parked all the way in the back of the lot, next to another car. She walked across the asphalt, glancing up at the overcast sky.
At least this time, it didn’t look like it was going to rain.
Just as she reached her car, she felt someone step up behind her. She whirled around, her heart in her throat, but then relaxed when she recognized the person as her friend and mentor.
“Raoul! You scared me.” She put a hand up to her racing heart. “What on earth are you doing here?” she asked.
He didn’t smile, and a shiver rippled down her back at the coldness in his eyes. But before she could move or shout, he’d covered her nose and her mouth with a cloth that reeked of ether and pressed her back against the unyielding car.
As her limbs went weak, she stared at him in horror.
Raoul Lee was the killer!
Help me, Lord! Please save me!
“You’ve proven to be quite disappointing, Megan,” he said almost conversationally, as he yanked open the passenger door of the car beside hers and roughly shoved her inside. He stood there for several more seconds, until red dots swam in her vision. “And I’m growing tired of this game. Too bad, really, you had such potential. I honestly considered you one of my brightest pupils.”
She wanted to fight, to escape, but she couldn’t move. Her muscles were totally lax, as if she were paralyzed. But when Raoul stepped away to slam the car door shut, she caught a quick glimpse of Sam’s wide eyes as he watched from the doorway of the police station. Hope flared as she thought he must have realized what was going on, but then suddenly he was gone.
Sam? Come find me, Sam! Dear Lord, help me!
Her slim hope of rescue evaporated. She couldn’t do anything but sit helplessly in the corner of the passenger seat as Raoul casually slid behind the wheel of the car. In a flash he had the car started and had backed out of the parking space. No one seemed to notice as he drove toward the highway.
“I can’t believe how you let me down.” Raoul glanced at her with an expression of pure hatred as he drove. “I trained you better than this! How stupid can you be, Megan? I mean, really, how could you ignore the evidence like that? At first I was amused when Sherman was arrested for all three murders, but then I began to grow very annoyed with you. Sherman was an idiot, but you credited him with masterminding three murders!”
She forced her eyelids open with an effort, concentrating on his face. The drug-soaked cloth he’d pressed against her face was still lying on her chest, the sweet scent making her feel sick.
“I tried to give you another chance to redeem yourself by killing Liza in your backyard, but once again, you failed miserably. How could you be so dense? Didn’t you see me following you? Didn’t you figure out I bugged your cell phone?”
Horrified by what Raoul was saying, she tried not to listen.
If she could move, she’d wiggle around until the cloth fell to the floor. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t make her muscles obey her commands. In some dark corner of her mind, she realized there must be something else mixed with the ether, some sort of concoction that Raoul Lee had dreamed up himself, to hold his victims awake yet captive.
Another detail she’d missed during the investigation. First the latex particles and now this. Would he
r mistakes cost her her life?
Dear God, give me strength.
“Those two girls weren’t my first victims, you know,” he continued, as if they were actually having a rational conversation. “Do you remember me telling you how I worked in Boulder, Colorado, before coming to Chicago? I killed several young girls there, too. But I was smart enough to move on before anyone caught me. I was planning to leave Chicago, too, except that idiot Sherman decided to kill your sister, copying my M.O. I was going to kill him myself, but you had him arrested, without the opportunity of parole, before I could get to him.”
As Raoul talked, telling her horrible details about the lives he’d taken, she desperately tried to think of a way to escape. God helped those who tried to help themselves, didn’t He? And Raoul had obviously chosen her as his next victim, or he wouldn’t be telling her all this.
He was going to kill her, the same way he’d killed all those other girls.
Dragging her gaze away from the man who’d been her teacher and her mentor, she looked out the windshield and saw a large dilapidated red barn. She vaguely remembered Sam saying something about how he and Doug had camped near an old abandoned red barn the night he’d gotten into the fight with Amy.
When Raoul drove off the road, onto some sort of dirt trail, her hopes of being rescued diminished even further. The small clearing was surrounded by dense trees. No way would anyone think to look for her here.
If they even decided to look for her at all.
“I have already accepted a job offer in Seattle,” he told her as he turned off the car. “So once I’m finished with you, I’ll leave town and no one will ever link your death, and the deaths of those two ridiculous girls, to me.”
The gleam of insanity in his eyes sent a chill down her back. Because he was right. His plan seemed almost foolproof. Not only would Raoul escape but poor Sam might be wrongly convicted of the crimes.
Raoul’s crimes.
“This is all your fault, you know,” he continued, after he’d pulled a blanket out of the trunk and come over to open her passenger door. “You never should have dumped me for Jake Feeney. Pathetic how he came up here, begging you to take him back. At least you were smart enough to say no. But maybe I can turn that detail to my advantage by planting a little evidence in his apartment?” Raoul let out a hideous laugh. “Wouldn’t that just be a perfect twist to the perfect crime?”
She couldn’t believe turning this man down had sent him over the edge. Realizing how close she’d come to actually dating him made her feel ill.
He roughly yanked her from the car until she landed with a hard thud on the musty-smelling blanket.
She closed her eyes against the shaft of pain. For a moment her leg jerked and she hoped the effects of the drug were beginning to wear off. But then Raoul gathered the corners of the blanket together and lifted her up off the ground.
Raoul wasn’t a big man, but he was much stronger than he looked. She counted off seconds in her head, trying to estimate how much time passed as she bumped along, before he suddenly dropped her to the ground.
Swamped by a sudden, overwhelming pain, blackness swirled in her mind. It would be so easy to give in to the darkness, but she struggled to remain conscious.
She couldn’t let Raoul win.
She refused to give up without a fight!
Finally, he roughly pulled the blanket away from her face, and fresh air filled her nostrils. For several seconds, she reveled in the clean scent. She tried to lift her arms and her legs, and was rewarded by a small flicker of movement.
Close. She was so close to being able to escape. Especially since she didn’t see any sign of the drug-soaked rag. Had he left it behind in the car? If so, she needed to take advantage of his mistake.
He was proud of what he’d done. He’d done nothing but talk to her since he’d captured her. She needed to keep him talking. But how?
“Ah, I see you’re starting to come around, aren’t you, Megan?” Raoul took his time, straightening the corners of the blanket until she was lying in the center of the coarse fabric. “That’s so nice. Too bad the clouds are blocking out most of the sun.”
He leaned over her, peering down into her face. “You see, I like to look deep into my victims’ eyes as I kill them,” he whispered.
She wanted to look away but was captivated by the evil lingering in his eyes. She shivered, knowing he was telling the truth. He enjoyed killing. He was good enough to hide the evidence of his crimes.
And after she was gone, he’d move to Seattle and begin another killing spree all over again.
She couldn’t let that happen. Desperately, she tried to flex her muscles, willing her strength to return.
“Don’t move,” Raoul said, lightly stroking his hand down her bare arm. “I’ll be right back.”
He was leaving! Thrilled at the opportunity, she gathered every ounce of willpower and strained to move. One inch, and then another. Maybe if she could make it to the edge of the woods, she could hide long enough for someone to notice she was gone and to come after her.
Even though she knew her chances of being rescued were slim to none, she didn’t give up. Inch by agonizing inch, she crawled to the edge of the blanket. She felt the softness of grass beneath her fingers when Raoul abruptly returned.
“Tsk, tsk,” he muttered, and she heard a soft thud as he dropped whatever he’d been carrying. “You’re obviously stronger than I anticipated.”
No! She silently screamed in protest when he simply reached down and pressed the sickening-sweet cloth against her face once again.
Helplessly, she stared up at him as the strength in her muscles slowly evaporated.
He’d won. She hadn’t been strong enough to get away.
After a minute or two, he tossed the drug-soaked cloth aside and then pulled her back to the center of the blanket. “You see, I need you here on the blanket so there’s no chance of stray evidence getting away from me,” he said in an oddly matter-of-fact tone.
He pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and then grabbed the brand-new orange polyurethane rope. When he reached down to lift her head, sliding the rope behind her neck, she knew she’d lost.
But a strange sense of peace washed over her. Maybe she was going to die, but she wasn’t alone.
The pastor’s sermon from the book of Psalms echoed in her mind. The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom should I be afraid?
Raoul drew the ends of the bright orange rope together until they tightened painfully around her neck. He peered down into her eyes, and instinctively she knew he wanted to see fear reflected in her gaze.
Except she wasn’t afraid.
“You’re going to die, Megan,” he whispered, pulling the rope tighter, cutting off her oxygen. She maintained a serene expression, despite the pain.
“Stop! Leave her alone!”
The shout startled Raoul into dropping the rope. He swung around in shock. From her position on the blanket she caught a glimpse of Sam’s tall, lean figure running toward her.
Sam had followed her!
Her wild relief quickly turned to fear when Raoul pulled a gun from the small of his back and took aim.
No! Go back! He has a gun! Go back!
But she couldn’t force the words past her bruised and paralyzed throat. Even as she watched, Sam switched directions, heading for the protection of the trees.
Too late. Raoul pulled the trigger and the sound of a gunshot echoed through the night.
To her horror, she saw Sam crumple and fall to the ground.
SIXTEEN
Megan desperately tried to crawl away from Raoul, but her muscles wouldn’t cooperate. She managed to move a few inches, but he easily caught her.
“Now you’ve done it!” Raoul’s eyes blazed with fury. “This wasn’t part of the plan!”
Please Lord, save Sam. Please spare his life!
She flexed her fingers in the blanket, willing
her muscles to obey. Her strength seemed to be returning more quickly this time, and she could only surmise some of the drug in the cloth had already evaporated.
Hoping and praying Sam wasn’t fatally wounded and that help was on the way, she stared up at Raoul.
“Won’t work,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Oh, yes, it will.” Raoul didn’t seem to be fazed by her returning strength. He gathered the ends of the rope, his gaze fanatical. “You think you’ll be strong, but you won’t. Eventually, you’ll panic.” The evil was clear in his eyes when he leaned closer to murmur, “They all do.”
She wouldn’t, and when he began to pull the ends of the rope tighter, she gathered what was left of her strength and lunged. Using her fingers, she desperately clawed at his face, his eyes.
Raoul reared back, howling in pain. Without wasting a second, she crawled away, putting as much distance between them as possible.
But he wasn’t hurt badly enough, and when his hands clamped around her ankles, yanking hard to bring her back, she knew there was no chance for escape.
He swore viciously, grabbed the rope and tied it around her neck. Instantly, red dots swam in her mind and she knew she had less than a minute left.
Bring me home, Lord.
Luke pulled up next to his police-issued vehicle parked conspicuously at the side of the road, and peered through the darkness, his heart thundering in his chest.
Sam had taken his car, calling Luke to let him know how some guy grabbed Megan and was headed toward the old abandoned barn. He could see the barn, but no people.
Where were they?
And then suddenly he saw them. Several yards away. A man, sitting on top of a woman, strangling her with a bright orange rope that seemed to glow in the dark.
Please, Lord, don’t let me be too late!
Moving silently, he crept closer. When he was within range, he lifted his weapon and fired. Instantly, the man arched his back in pain, and after several heartbeats, toppled over.
Thank God! Rushing over, he yanked the guy off Megan, taking a moment to verify he was indeed dead. Turning his attention to Megan, he gently brushed her hair away from her eyes. “Megan?”